[rdtsc]

> 15 years as a "Programmer I" is not a good sign.

What is "Programmer I"? Is it some kind of specific grade scale, how standard it is? Then how does a startup of 5 people assign "Programmer" grades. How high does it go? Can't they just assign to each other the highest "Programmer" grade so it looks good on paper?

We spend the whole day with a candidate testing and interacting with them but we never bother looking at "Programmer" grade.

[Timothee]

I've seen that kind of nomenclature only on sites like Monster or Salary.com and I've always felt similar as your comment: where do these come from? How come I was never told about it? How come my positions were never classified like this?

Overall, for me, it falls under these semi-established things that you're supposed to learn somehow. Some people know what it is and will make sure that their jobs are classified a certain way. Of course, since I don't know, I'm biased, but I feel that employers and employees that use them are probably not good cultural matches for me.

[bane]

Most people get out of school and head for a mega corp for their first job. Boring mega corps like to put people into easy to categorize slots for the payroll people. It's an easy marker to look at in a candidate if their job = megacorp and their time in that position was more than a 2-4 years, their was probably an issue with them.

With really small companies, you have to on other things. I've worked for both kinds of companies, there's almost always some kind of title/responsibility change you can point to. It's not often that a person slaves over the same pile of code, in literally the same job for a decade.

Demonstrate that progression in the bullet points or beneath the title.